Insurance - Kent Wright

I was preferred. It was my chest he reclined on when he had finished marauding for the evening. The black, faux-fur bag bed was just insurance in case I didn’t come home or wasn’t in bed before his bedtime. It was very, very soft, which he liked, and because it was made like a sack he could either sleep in its inky inside or on top. Still that was clearly not in the same league as the perfect nest he preferred under the comforter between my legs.

Metro, my ocicat had an evening ritual. He dozed first on my chest nose to nose with me. After a few minutes of this (quality time), he rotated 180 degrees, which left my nose alone with his tail end. He assumed this position so that he could slip deeper into his slumbers with his chin on my hands, which he wanted folded across my chest. When the fresh bay breezes slithered in the skylight above the bed and reached Metro’s back, he rose, tapped firmly on the edge of the comforter, which was raised, and disappeared to spend the remainder of the night stretched out between my legs. His own legs extended straight out from his body so that if, and this was not encouraged, I moved during a particularly vivid dream, they could be stiffened automatically to wake and warm me.

In the morning, and he was not an early riser, he would follow along the outline of my body to find his way out from his warm den. He head would pop out with his green eyes still unfocused but purring at full volume. He remained like that for a few moments while he tried to remember where he was, but finding nothing pressing on his calendar he would slowly sink down. His head came to rest in the notch of my arm with his body still hidden under the warm down.